At the 2025 NACS State of the Industry Summit, Varish Goyal, the CEO of Loop Neighborhood Markets and a NACS executive committee member, delivered an overview of how the industry performed in 2024, presenting operational, financial and performance metrics, and noted what to watch in 2025.
“Q3 brought improvements and Q4 was significantly better than expected,” he said. “We’re a resilient industry, and the second half of last year was amazing and total inside sales grew 2.4% to continue our streak, which is now 22 years.”
Industry-wide, however, total sales were down 2.3% in 2024—a second year of decline—but like 2023, the decline was due to the 5.7% decrease in fuel sales, driven by the 6.5% decrease in the average fuel price ($3.55 per gallon in 2023 vs. $3.32 in 2024).
“I can’t think of any other industry that could see a $70 billion decline in revenue and still remain profitable,” said Goyal in reference to the decline in fuel sales, which dipped from $859.8 billion in 2023 to $837.4 billion in 2024.
Direct store operating expense (DSOE) growth slowed in 2024, but DSOE was still up $9.8 billion to $159.9 billion.
Through a per store, per month lens, repairs and maintenance within DSOE was up 10.2% in 2024, a signal that good help is hard to find. “It is becoming harder to find good contractors to do the work, and it’s also becoming harder to find materials at a good price,” said Goyal.
In 2024, facility expenses grew at a rate “more than double the entire category of direct store operating expenses,” with depreciation and amortization having a significant impact—a 13% increase in 2024, or $13,661 per store per month.
The largest expense within DSOE, wages and benefits, showed improvement in its rate of growth. “Wage growth has finally slowed to a single digit rate, which is a positive sign that our labor market may be starting to improve,” said Goyal. He cautioned, however, that a 3.4% increase in wages still equates to a $1,331 per store, per month increase within that expense.
Interested in how other categories performed in 2024? The NACS State of the Industry Report of 2024 Data is available for purchase here.